[Q] How was Crèvecoeur essential to differentiating the American life style and the European life style?
[A] In his lifetime, Crèvecoeur wrote several books and works that helped create the individuality of Americans, and seperating themselves from their European counterparts. These works included Letters from an American Farmer (1782). This book helped show the cultural differences between the American colonies and Europe, also establishing an "literary culture" in America.
[Q] What was Crèvecoeur's stance on the American Revolution, and how did it effect the rest of his life?
[A] He was not sympathetic towards the Americans, so he tried his best to remain neutral. For that reason, both sides did not trust him, and he was imprisoned by the British for three months. During this time he took a British ship and headed for England, leaving his children and wife behind. While in England he published and sold copies of his book Letters from an American Farmer (1782). After going to his native land of France for several years, he finally returned to American to find his wife dead, by an Native American raid on his farmhouse. He presumed his sons dead, but he later found them in Boston
[Q] Why was Crèvecoeur's writings so popular within the New World?
[A] In his writings, Crèvecoeur asks a very important question; What is an American? He helps portray that Americans were very tolerant of religion, and showed the innocence and simplicity of the average American. He is also the first writer to explore the concept of the American Dream. Providing very useful information for many new comers to the country, Crèvecoeur's writings had become very popular.
Facts:
French - born American fiction writer and novelist
Known as the author of Letters from an American Farmer and went by the names "J. Hector St. John," and Michel - Guillaume Jean De Crevecoeur. These names reflected his American and European culture.
He was educated at a Jesuit school, where he learned to speak English.
He served in the French and Indian War as a soldier and a mapmaker.
He purchased a farm on the Hudson River in Orange County, New York which later served as an asset in his later publications
Due to his neutral state betweent the loyalists and the patriots, the Revolutionaries forced him to leave his farm and the British imprisoned him for about three months.
After this term, he left his family and went to London to write letters which presented a classical statement of the meaning of America to immigrants
While in France, he published an expansion to his earlier work called "Lettres d'un Cultivateur Americain" in 1784
When he returned to his beloved home in New York, he found that his wife, Mehitable Tippet, had died and his farmhouse was destroyed. Later he came to know that his children were located in Boston.
Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur
Essential Questions:
Facts:
LINK
"Letters From An American Farmer" :
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/CREV/home.html
WORK CITED
Vignery, Katie. "Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur." Adventures in American
Literature. Austin : Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1996. 105-107.
"Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur 1735-1813." eNotes.com. 2008. eNotes.com.
18 Mar. 2008 <http://www.enotes.com/nineteenth-century-criticism/
michel-guillaume-jean-de-crevecoeur>.